Knights & Nighthuntresses – A Sisters of Avelorn Expansion
The position of Everqueen comes with much influence over the kingdoms of Ulthuan and it’s inhabitants. But being responsible for so many souls often necessitates dealing with threats abroad and gathering infomation about the course of events in the wider world. Thus the Nighthuntresses work directly with the Everqueen’s Court to evaluate potential threats to the safety of Ulthuan and deal with them appropriately. Whereas the Everqueen’s handmaidens deal with matters within Ulthuan, the Everqueen’s nighthuntresses deal with matters without.
To better support the Nighthuntresses during their time abroad, sisters are receiving training to fight while mounted, and further enchance the enchantments of their bows, to disrupt the magical defenses of the enemy.
With the rosters of all races receiving updates and maturing, I thought there was room to elaborate on the Sisters of Avelorn unit concept, while adding some more variety for High Elves players.
This mod adds 1 new unit, 1 new legendary hero, 1 reworked regiment of renown (Sisters of Avelorn) and 1 new regiment of renown, for the High Elves
Sisters of Avelorn that are skilled on horseback will take to the field mounted on armoured elven steeds – should the situation call for more protection and speed.
This unit can be recruited from the same building your faction would recruit Sisters of Avelorn, plus an additional building requirement of a Farrier (level 3 cavalry building) in the same province.
This unit can be recruited by all playable High Elves factions
Knights of Avelorn are a higher tier of the Sisters of Avelorn unit with a few important improvements – they are much faster and their attacks apply the debuff Dampening – that weakens the magic resistance of the unit they are attacking, meaning more damage for any units in your army that do magic damage.
Ranged attacks from this unit create a small explosion on impact, dealing damage in an area, rather that a single entity. This should be considered when attacking a unit that one of your friendly units is engaged with, as friendly fire may result should friendly projectiles collide with friendly forces.
The stretch of northern Avelorn that borders the Annuli mountains can be particularly cold and teeming with chaos warped beasts. These sisters have overcome both dangers to guard Avelorn’s beauty.
This RoR unit can be found in the recruitment pool for every playable High Elf faction and is unlocked for recruitment once one of your lords reaches level 24.
These Knights of Avelorn trade their Dampening attack debuff for the Frostbite speed debuff, along with aura that further slows the speed of nearby enemies. Knights of Avelorn already provide a great opportunity for High Elf players to have high tier cavalry archers that can kite enemy units when used properly. The Frostmaidens further emphasize controlling enemy movement with those sorts of tactics, and trading away some damage in the process.
KNOWN BUG: The 10 turn respawn timer that affects when a RoR can be recruited after being disbanded or destroyed is broken for modded RoRs. As a result, you’ll be able to recruit the unit again without having to wait until CA fixes this bug.
Naera’s time as a nighthuntress has brought her to every continent in the old and new worlds – tracking skaven warlords in Lustria, hunting down vampires in Sylvania, eliminating khainite assassins in the northlands and disrupting WAAAAGHs in the badlands.
Naera replaces the generic Handmaiden hero that Allarielle starts with and is thus only available to the Avelorn faction starting out.
Being a nighthuntress, Naera represents a more aggressive and direct version of a handmaiden – serving the Everqueen far afield from Ulthuan and its armies. Thus they fight more flexibly, dealing with each mission uniquely, ever ready to dispatch dangerous foes with their Starfire bows.
On the campaign map, Naera has a unique set of character actions that are useful in any situation, whereas she plays much like a Wood Elf Waystalker in battle, being able to get into position unseen, then deal big damage at range.
Naera is only available when starting a new game with this mod enabled. She will not appear in a game that is in progress
Particularly dangerous foes can attract the attention of multiple nighthuntresses, who call a night hunt to bring the foe down.
This RoR unit can be found in the recruitment pool for every playable High Elf faction and is unlocked for recruitment once one of your lords reaches level 32.
This unit replaces the Everqueen’s Courtguard (Sisters of Avelorn) regiment of renown for all high elf factions
This unit is unique in a few ways, containing far fewer elves than most other high elf units and Starfire – a more powerful version of Dampening. This is because this unit a group of nighthuntresses, each as capable as Naera in battle. As such their numbers and potential are adjusted accordingly.
Regiments of Renown are a bit of a weird niche in TW – in a large pitched battles, they kind of get lost in the maelstrom of combat and their uniqueness is less important than the fact that they are just more bodies on the field. But in smaller battles they can be the difference between victory or defeat.
All that being said, I didn’t really feel like the Everqueen’s Courtguard was all that unique or effective. Their RoR buff Banner of Avelorn is certainly powerful, but winds of magic buffs can be gotten many different ways now that the game is much more mature than at release, so unit felt like wasted lore and combat potential to me.
Conversely, diving into the nighthuntress lore to bring a few of those expert operatives together into a group that would be truly renowned amongst the Sisters of Avelorn – the most experienced, powerful and well travelled of their number, is a more worthy use of RoR slot – in my opinion 😉
KNOWN BUG: The 10 turn respawn timer that affects when a RoR can be recruited after being disbanded or destroyed is broken for modded RoRs. As a result, you’ll be able to recruit the unit again without having to wait until CA fixes this bug.
Below are a list of great groups I collaborated with and asked questions to get this mod finished:
– Cryswar for the awesome guides they have written and published on steam
– Da Modding Den discord [discord.gg] for helping me troubleshoot issues and give me direction to solve problems that came up when making this
Below is a list of mods others have mentioned had some sort of conflict with this one. See the comments for more details to see if it could apply to your situation should you have troubles:
– Legendary High Elven Characters
– Ultimate Lighting + Random Weather Effects
Required items:
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Knights & Nighthuntresses - Updated SFX — Steam Workshop
